Pauline Books & Media Blog

by Jean Dimech-Juchniewicz in Facing Infertility: A Catholic Approach.When God created Adam and Eve, he created them for one another. Men and women are made to physically and spiritually complement one another. When Adam saw Eve for the first time, he exclaimed in utter joy, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” And the author of Genesis continues, “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:23–24). Though A...

by Angela Franks, PhD in Contraception and Catholicism, releasing Nov. 2013A Catholic who has a big family and eschews contraception has likely had the following experience: Someone dismisses NFP by saying, “But that method doesn’t work; look how many kids you have.” In response, I like to say, “Define ‘work.’” If I had wanted to, in theory, I could have foregone the children I do have by using NFP to avoid pregnancy. But NFP has worked on me at a much d...

by The Archdiocese of Boston in Transformed in Love: Building Your Catholic Marriage.Just as an architect has a purpose for his plans, so too, God has a purpose for sexual intercourse and marital sexuality. Marital sexuality is an important, beautiful, and powerful part of marriage. God created sexual intercourse! He wants us to have a fulfilling, lasting, loving, sexual relationship. As married couples, we need to cherish sexual intimacy.“God created mankind in his image; in the image of God h...

by Katie Elrod and Paul Carpentier, MD, CFCMC, in Women, Sex, and the Church: A Case for Catholic Teaching, edited by Erika Bachiochi.Every child, born or unborn, created as a result of loving married intercourse, or in a petri dish to be transferred to the womb, left indeﬁnitely in cryostorage, or used in scientiﬁc experimentation, shares equally in this inalienable human dignity.Moreover, each child is equal in dignity to his or her mother. This is why the desire for a child, albeit a very r...

by Angela Franks, PhD, in Women, Sex, and the Church: A Case for Catholic Teaching, edited by Erika Bachicochi.Margaret Sanger and the dominant culture give one answer to the question of what is bad for us: female fertility. By contrast, the Church argues that it is not the female body that oppresses women and girls, but rather that deformed desire is at the heart of all sin—and thus all oppression.If deformed desire is bad for us, healed desire, put in the service of self-giving love, is good ...

by Karol Wojtyla (Saint John Paul II), translated by Grzegorz Ignatik in Love and Responsibility.Sexual intercourse of a man and a woman in marriage remains on the level of a personal union in love only on the condition that they do not positively exclude the possibility of procreation and parenthood. When this “I can be a father,” “I can be a mother” is positively excluded in the consciousness and will of a man and a woman, then what is left (objectively speaking) in the conjugal act is sex...

CyclePlus is a menstrual calendar, a period tracker, an ovulation chart and a fertility chart interpretation tool. It is the perfect complement to the myfertilitycharts.com website, and it adds:* a daily quote from the wisdom of the theology of the body,* reflections across a woman’s life-span about body issues that surface between the 20s and the 50s, between the longing for love and menopause,* an invitation to explore how your body speaks to you about respect, love, intimacy and faithfu...